


snare drums

by sapphicish



Category: Watchmen (TV), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Spoilers, a lot of swearing because this is laurie and she has a fun headspace, post-1x07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21644986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: “Hey,” Angela said. She was panting, and covered in blood, and Laurie had never been happier to see that stupid fucking outfit with the facepaint and the rosary—also covered in blood, slick and shiny in the shitty almost nonexistent lighting of this weird Kavalry hideout.Or: Angela rescues Laurie from being subjected to more white supremacist exposition, somewhere in between doing literally everything else.
Relationships: Laurie Blake & Angela Abar | Sister Night
Comments: 9
Kudos: 23





	snare drums

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this very quickly after watching the episode twice and i've done like...no editing, because we live life on the edge when we're thinking about the possibility of laurie blake dying or having something else awful happen to her somewhere in the next two episodes. she's fed up and she deserves a break and by god i'll give it to her

“Hey,” Angela said. She was panting, and covered in blood, and Laurie had never been happier to see that stupid fucking outfit with the facepaint and the rosary—also covered in blood, slick and shiny in the shitty almost nonexistent lighting of this weird Kavalry hideout. For the first time since Keene had left her alone she was thinking about something other than his words, about what he was doing, about what _they_ were doing, about what the fuck was going on with just about everything. Now all she was thinking, _oh thank God. Jesus Christ. Fuck you, but thank you._

She shouldn't have been thanking him of all people, but old habits die hard and yada-yada-yada and the point was Angela was here, and she wasn't some hallucination from a concussion Laurie thought early on she might have because, y'know, trapdoor.

Just to make sure, she asked.

Angela gave her a look only the real Angela could give – exasperated and annoyed, her breath hot on Laurie as she leaned over to cut her ties.

She was handed a gun as soon as she shook them off and stood, and she gripped it tight, looking at all the unconscious bodies surrounding them. Some of them were probably dead – really fucking dead. One she'd seen go down with the rosary to his face again and again like a whip, another had been choked out, most of them had just been beaten near to death and, yeah, that was kind of hot. She was a big girl, she was willing to admit when someone rescuing her from a bunch of crazed racist lunatics with evil plans for world domination or whatever was hot.

And it was hot.

She could recognize that easily, simply, in the same way she recognized things like: people were hot sometimes. You just had to deal with it. And: trapdoor, fucking weird. Keene, fucking creepy. And stupid from the start, how had she not known? In her defense, it wasn't like she went around seeing racist fucks in everyone she dealt with – not until coming to Tulsa, at least, and now she was wondering if the guy she got her coffee from in the mornings was one, or if the cop who kept looking at her ass when she was turned away was one, or if – well, the point was made, and the point was that after this she was never going to trust someone who was as grossly charming as Keene ever again.

Yeah.

Things like that.

“Hey,” Laurie said back, very belatedly, as breathless as Angela was for some reason. She'd done none of the work except kick one of the fuckers when he was down near her – as hard as she possibly could. In the balls. It felt right, like justice. The same way she felt now, when she accidentally kicked him in the face about three times. It wasn't Keene, who was the one she really wanted to kick after pulling every bit of information from him that she could, but it was close enough. One white supremacist looked like the next white supremacist, and so on, and so forth.

“You ready?” Angela asked, glancing at her. It was all dark under that hood, except for the bright whites of her eyes, piercing. Laurie took one last look around—at the paint on the wall drawn in that shitty cryptic symbol, at the frame of something she didn't know anything about but knew it had to be nothing good, at the bodies.

“You have a phone?”

“What?”

“Do. You. Have. A. Phone.”

“Yeah, wh—“

“Give it to me.”

Angela handed her a phone after a moment, probably because in the haze of adrenaline she realized why Laurie wanted it. Laurie snapped several quick photos of their surroundings – some came out blurry, but what the fuck didn't when your hands were shaking the way hers were?

Then there was a noise far away from them in the distance, a crashing, and Angela cursed under her breath. “Come on. We've got to go. Now.”

Laurie slid the phone into her pocket because Angela was already moving, not looking back, shoving the door open and disappearing out into the hallway and there was a moment of panic where Laurie thought, _if she fucking vanishes on me and I have to deal with these assholes..._ but no, she caught up to Angela, and the noise turned out to be some guy struggling under a barrel pushed under him. Laurie stared at the mask, all those black splotches, the way he was grunting and groaning and trying to free himself even when he was clearly bleeding out on the floor in some warehouse.

Then Angela took the rosary, twisting it between her fingers, and sent it flying down at his face. It made a sound like something _in_ that face cracked, and Laurie had to laugh and wince at the same time. “Jesus, Night.”

“Come on,” Angela said, and Laurie followed her out, all the way into the parking lot. There was a truck with cabbages in the back, and she made sure to take a photo of the license plate; and just beside that, a car she immediately knew belonged to Angela because of the gigantic dent in the front. And the busted hood. And the...

“Holy shit, what did you do to this thing?”

“Rammed Scare's car with it,” Angela said, businesslike, and hopped into the driver's seat. “Get in.”

“A fucking trapdoor,” Laurie grumbled as she climbed into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut harder than completely necessary because otherwise she felt like she'd punch something. “Can you fucking believe that? A fucking _trapdoor_ just installed in that woman's living room like some sort of weird supervillain. What ever happened to just having a goddamn safe room behind a bookshelf or something? God, racists are getting advanced. Next thing you know they'll have—fucking—teleporters or some shit—”

“You done?”

“Yeah. I'm _done._ ”

“Good,” Angela said as they drifted out onto the road in no direction she immediately recognized. “Because I've got a lot of shit to tell you, and you've got a lot of shit to catch up on, and we don't have a lot of time.”

Laurie tilted her head back, closing her eyes. “Great,” she said, feeling it resound dully in her chest. “Sounds really exciting.”

She didn't get a debriefing. Instead there was just silence, and then a water bottle eased carefully into her hands, and she instinctively grasped it close, seeking that chill. She screwed the cap off—even that felt harder to do than it should have been—and brought it up for a long gulp of the contents, deeper and deeper until she almost choked on it and had to pull it away, coughing a little. She wanted it to be vodka instead, kind of, or whiskey, or anything that would make her throat burn and her thoughts dim at the edges, but that was just the kind of thought people had in these kinds of shitty scenarios, and she knew the last thing she should be right now was drunk off her ass.

“Ten minutes,” Angela said. “Then we'll talk.”

Laurie realized what it was almost immediately. An olive branch or whatever, a peace offering, something like that. Like this was bigger than the both of them and, well, obviously it fucking _was,_ but for now she was given a little time to just breathe, to rub at her reddened wrists and think about the absolute _hell_ she was going to put Keene through when she found him again, wherever he was.

Like she could close her eyes and drink her water and just sit for a while.

“Thanks,” Laurie said, hoping Angela knew what she meant, hoping she knew that she wasn't just thanking her for the water, but everything else too. She didn't look aside to see if it got through to her because, honestly, eye contact at this point and in this moment was a little too sappy for her tastes.

So she did it.

She closed her eyes and drank her water, and the car drove on, and Angela didn't turn on the radio to fill the silence.

And Laurie was tired, because she was always tired, but for once there was something else, too.

It was like she had a reason, something to do, and it was also like she wasn't alone in it.

That was good. 

Good enough for her.

Good enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> this episode absolutely wrecked any chance i had with my fics reaching even borderline canon so i figured, hey, let's just push it over the edge into good old-fashioned "this isn't going to happen but it sure is fun" territory
> 
> also: there was literally nothing that could stop me from writing this the way i wrote it and that includes thinking about laurie's reaction to learning about manhattan/cal and angela, which would undoubtedly be to start throwing fists. not in my universe! in my universe she just thinks angela is hot.


End file.
